[OB] Swallowing Gemstones

[BillLangdon he/him]

So OathBringer introduces the idea of swallowing gemstones, thus allowing a spren to inhabit it and (sort of) invest the ingester of the stone. This raises a lot of questions. 

1. Could anyone swallow a gemstone with a captive spren and gain a kind of spren bond (not a nahel bond) and thus access surges similar to how a fabrial does?

2. How important is intent? A gemheart in a listener is part of their physiology, they see it as their heart. But a gem sitting in someone’s stomach isn’t part of them or their soul, but does that act of swallowing it intentionally effect this? Does it create connection between the gem and the cognitive mind in some way? If you snuck a gem with a spren in it into someone’s food, would the spren be able to have any effect?

3. What would happen to a radiant who attempted this? Would there be any sort of compounding of their nahel bond and the gemstone spren? Or would their nahel bond reject the experiment?

4. Is swallowing the gemstone the only way to achieve this? What about surgical implantation?

The only real parallel we have for this is hemalurgy:

a. spikes of a particular metal, infused with a particular attribute from a previously spiked person, placed in a particular bind point, create a particular effect, sometimes changing physiological makeup or granting a spiritual avenue for a given system of investiture.

b. A Gemstone of a particular type/color, inhabited by a spren of a particular spren species, inserted into the body in a particular place (stomach/heart), create a particular effect? Sometimes changing physiological makeup (listener forms/whatever happened to Amaram) or granting a spiritual avenue for a given system of investiture (“forms of power” like storm form)

In this way it seems a lot more similar to Hemalurgy that I originally thought.

Thoughts on this?

[Rainier]

20 minutes ago, BillLangdon said:

So OathBringer introduces the idea of swallowing gemstones, thus allowing a spren to inhabit it and (sort of) invest the ingester of the stone. This raises a lot of questions. 

I'm not ready to extend this to all spren or to all gemstones. The only time we saw this was the same spren (Yelig-nar, one of the Unmade). I'm not certain, but I think it was the same gemstone, too. So I don't think swallowing a gem with a trapped flamespren would do anything for you besides giving you an interesting bowel movement.

I'll bet that we'll see more swallowing stones, but I'd be very surprised if there are more than a dozen spren who can take advantage of it.

22 minutes ago, BillLangdon said:

A Gemstone of a particular type/color, inhabited by a spren of a particular spren species, inserted into the body in a particular place (stomach/heart), create a particular effect?

I'm not the first to draw this comparison, but this sounds more like what happened at the end of OB when Moash stabbed Jezrien. The difference is that it still requires metal, somehow, to matter. This is something I've been interested in: metal is clearly special throughout the cosmere. What's so special about rocks and crystals that allows them to store magic? The combination of knife/spike and gem at the end of the handle was enough to kill an immortal being, after all.

[Wandering Investor]

I suspect yelig-nar is unique in his ability to inhabit gemstones in people's stomachs. Dawnsinger bodies are build to be infused by a spren and change, so I'm not sure if it would work naturally for humans. Maybe if the gem can connect/piece the spiritweb. 

It should be noted that Jezrien is a cognitive shadow, aka a spren, inhabiting a body, so the heralds and fused are a bit unique in that regard. I suspect if you stuck that dagger in anyone else you'd only tear off a piece of the spirit if anything. But that's speculation.

As for metal, when concentrated investiture takes a solid physical form, it tends(only?) takes the form of metal. Examples are shard godmetals and spren. 

[Weltall]

As Rainier says, I suspect that swallowing a gemstone to create a bond isn't something that works generally but is either unique to Yelig-nar or a very small subset of similar entities. It's mentioned that bridgemen would sometimes try to swallow valuables like sphers, so over the course of hundreds or thousands of years you'd think that someone would have eventually swallowed a gem they'd stolen from a fabrial and would notice if it did anything special.

1 hour ago, BillLangdon said:

2. How important is intent? A gemheart in a listener is part of their physiology, they see it as their heart. But a gem sitting in someone’s stomach isn’t part of them or their soul, but does that act of swallowing it intentionally effect this? Does it create connection between the gem and the cognitive mind in some way? If you snuck a gem with a spren in it into someone’s food, would the spren be able to have any effect?

It's probably required. We know from WoB for example that you can't draw an Aon by accident and Bands of Mourning gives us two very prominent examples where Intent was needed:

Spoiler

Wayne couldn't use the unkeyed goldmind until he knew that it was a goldmind and tried to use it. Wayne didn't know that the spearhead was the Bands of Mourning and so didn't feel anything; Marasi only was able to use it when she made the connection in her mind and then tried, and she had to tell Wax what it was before he could access the power as well.

Odium explains that the smokestone he's giving to Amaram is a vessel for Yelig-nar and will give him the power that was promised, which should be enough to form then necessary Intent.

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4. Is swallowing the gemstone the only way to achieve this? What about surgical implantation?

I want to say that it probably doesn't matter exactly where it is in the body as long as it's considered 'inside' you and is able to stay there. Brandon has mentioned that metal in allomancy doesn't have to be in the stomach for example, the mouth is enough and a metallic suppository would work too, which Brandon confirmed but then added 'possible, but gross'.

19 minutes ago, Wandering Investor said:

It should be noted that Jezrien is a cognitive shadow, aka a spren, inhabiting a body, so the heralds and fused are a bit unique in that regard. I suspect if you stuck that dagger in anyone else you'd only tear off a piece of the spirit if anything. But that's speculation.

If you want to get nitpicky, a Cognitive Shadow is a soul that's been permeated with Investiture and thus persists longer than it should before passing Beyond. However, we've seen these take several different forms. The Returned have a Divine Breath stapling their soul back into their original bodies, the Fused possess new bodies (killing the original Cognitive/Spiritual aspect of the person who used to inhabit it), Shades have a weak Physical manifestation but are barely corporeal and separate from their original bodies... and we're not quite sure what the Heralds do in order to get new bodies when they resurrect, though it seems like when their connection to the Physical is restored at the start of a Desolation they simply manifest a new body to match their Spiritual ideal.

As far as killing Jezrien goes, I suspect that what happened was that the knife stole the part of Jezrien's spiritweb that bound him to the Oathpact/the other Heralds (which is why Ash felt it right away) while at the same time it also happened to be a fatal stab wound, so when he died that time he died permanently. So, it's not that it would have worked differently on a normal person per se but it was taking something from Jezrien that a normal person didn't have, just like a hemalurgic spike can be used on an allomancer or a human with no magic system, it just can't steal all the same things from the latter that it could from the former. But the mechanics are still the same.

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As for metal, when concentrated investiture takes a solid physical form, it tends(only?) takes the form of metal. Examples are shard godmetals and spren. 

.Brandon has implied that Investiture condensed in solid form will always be a metal, as a little rule of the Cosmere that he's set up. He does mentione Aethers aren't metal but those aren't currently canon and he leaves that one open, so it's pretty much a hard and fast rule.

[Scion of the Mists]

20 hours ago, BillLangdon said:

The only real parallel we have for this is hemalurgy:

As Weltall mentions, we also have a parallel in Allomancy.  Any metal that is considered "inside" of you is burnable. 

I would guess that swallowing Yelig-Nar's gemstone has the effect of merging its spiritweb with that of the host.  @Steeldancer has an excellent Spiritual Realm post that goes into these things in more detail.